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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Vikings of Iceland To Socialist Europe: Drop Dead!

A good article here from Family Security Matters- a good example of a country finding some backbone in this day and age. I wonder if America has the same backbone when it comes to the Socialists in our midst, hellbent on bringing our Land to its knees with the yoke of Socialism?

Iceland to Europe: Drop Dead

Icelanders have revolted against government hubris, banking greed, and foreign arm-twisting. Americans could learn a thing or two from their Viking neighbors.

In a March 7th plebiscite (referendum) watched closely in Europe but below the radar in America, Iceland's voters overwhelmingly declared that their island nation’s largest bank is emphatically NOT too big to fail.

The plebiscite cleaned the clocks of Icelandic government dealmakers bent upon handing billions over to Britain and Holland. These two nations demand reimbursement from Reykjavik for losses they covered domestically when Iceland’s biggest private bank failed in 2008. But on March 7th, Icelanders showed their Viking ire by revolting against these demands and against their own government's part in the shakedown. On Monday, shell-shocked Reykjavik bureaucrats returned to the drawing board with irritated British and Dutch counterparts. The three governments must try again to find a way to help repay injured depositors in Britain and Holland – without further punishing or angering already beleaguered Icelanders.

This far-off mid-ocean nation is suffering record unemployment and economic woes aggravated by the American fiscal crisis. European arm-twisting that fueled public anger in Iceland suggests that we in America should dust off copies of the Monroe Doctrine. Alone in the North Atlantic, Iceland is neither fish nor fowl geographically. But she is American in outlook because of her distinguished history as a pathway for Viking explorers in the 1000s, her more recent part in killing Nazi wolfpacks, and her NATO membership.

Should Americans stand by silently and watch Iceland's steady impoverishment by European powers? For America, the Icelandic uprising invites intriguing questions about the financial disaster which has been unfolding in our own country since 2007.

First, one wonders whether are there parallels between what occurred among Iceland, Britain, and Holland and the financial and banking turmoil here that has hurt millions of Americans. Britain and Holland have openly threatened Iceland and suggested that the International Monetary Fund and European currency talks will be used to bludgeon the Icelandic people into submission to Anglo-Dutch reimbursement demands. Americans should now picture China in the role of Britain and Holland, and themselves in the role of Iceland. Far-fetched? Not as far as it used to be.

Second, the Icelandic revolt certainly could be compared with American concern about the use of taxpayer funds to rescue failing banks and businesses. Indeed, the revolt begs the question whether an American plebiscite is warranted insofar as our larger economic and debt problems are concerned. What sort of message would such a plebiscite send to America’s foreign and domestic debtors, and their servants in Washington? Perhaps more important, what sort of message would it send to Congress, that crumbling, co-opted, snoring citadel intended by the Framers to "protect" us from executive incompetence and overreach?

The March 7th "nei” in Iceland was aimed at an identified cadre of government dealmakers – one of which confidently called the plebiscite “meaningless.” This group quietly made commitments to London and The Hague without buy-in from already hard-pressed compatriots. Icelandic bureaucrats and politicians (who should have known better) confidently "volunteered" their fellow citizens to pay a staggering bill: 90 British pounds each, per month, for the next eight years, according to one source. Thus, the price of hubris.

Sound familiar? Americans should ask themselves:

Who are the American dealmakers shoveling over America’s substance to an army of “too big to fail” claimants and unfriendly nations, while small American businesses, workers, their pensions, and their health care are left to the wolves?Who allowed America's debt to reach enormous proportions without any realistic hope that the men, women, and children who will come after us will ever be able to pay it?

The best place to look for the intellectual fathers and mothers of these critical problems is the United States Congress, on both sides of the aisle.